


Pick the first apple

by eldvarpa



Category: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Alternate Universe, Canon-Typical Violence, Canonical Character Death, Daughters of Fëanor FTW, Deviates From Canon, Family Secrets, Fëanorian Elenwë, Gen, Implied/Referenced Incest, Kinslaying, POV Multiple
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-07
Updated: 2020-02-07
Packaged: 2021-02-28 01:35:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,216
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22605583
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eldvarpa/pseuds/eldvarpa
Summary: Elenwë died on the Ice - so the story goes - and went on living as Findis and Fëanor's daughter.(Set in the same verse asAster(NSFW), but can be read on its own.)
Relationships: Implied Fëanor/Findis
Kudos: 26





	Pick the first apple

The Silmaril was finally within her reach. 

Nimloth crumpled at her feet, wheezed, stilled. 

Elenwë stepped over her, dashed out of the throne room now piled with corpses.

Tyelcormo must be among the corpses. He had been the first to break through, but he was nowhere to be seen when she arrived to finish Díor and his wife off.

She was getting the Silmaril from their daughter, for Tyelcormo too. 

Elenwë rushed down the hallway towards her. 

The Silmaril shone in the middle of the Nauglamir, both way too big for child.

Elenwë's world narrowed down to the light. 

Curufinwë screamed something behind her, but she kept going.

He rushed ahead of her, just in time.

They hit him and not her. 

He fell on her, bringing her down too, while their soldiers caught up with them, and killed the ambushing Iathrim. 

“Oh god.” Elenwë forced herself to kneel and looked at Curufinwë. 

Blood bubbled up from his mouth, but he was trying to smile. 

“Big sister,” were his last words.

“Atarincë no,” she gasped, her voice rising until she was screaming, the light forgotten.

Idril met her not too far from Sirion, in a silent grove. 

At daybreak, the grove wasn't any less murky than the shores of Araman, where Elenwë had last seen Idril, as a child. 

“It _has_ been a while,” she said out loud. 

“I hope the pressing matter you wanted to discuss with me is not your memories, Lady.”

“My memories are yours too, Itarillë.” Elenwë pushed her hood back, revealing the bright honey hair which was the only thing they shared. Idril took after her father in everything else. She resembled him even more now that she was an adult, a queen. “Thank you for coming.” 

Idril didn't reply.

“I've heard your son – my grandson – married Elwing, sired twins on her.”

Again, Idril said nothing.

Elenwë gave a half-smirk. For all that she'd been hoping Idril would be more amenable, she admired her resolve. “The Silmaril belongs to him too now, I suppose?” she said and waited, until Idril was forced to speak.

“Make your point,” she demanded.

“Bring the Silmaril to me.”

“Why? Isn't my son Fëanáro's kin enough that he can't have it?”

“He is. But I've also heard he's been trying to find a way to reach the West, and that he has been out at sea for a while now. Do you know when he might return?”

Idril's jaw tensed. The way her forehead crinkled revealed that she didn't.

“It will be easy for you,” Elenwe pressed. “Just take the Silmaril and bring it to me, here. I will be waiting.”

“I will never rob my daughter-in-law for the sake of a murderer.”

“I _am_ your mother.”

Idril finally moved. She took measured steps towards Elenwë, until they were close enough to touch. She cocked her head mockingly towards her. She was slightly taller than her. “A right and proper mother, abandoning me and father, and forcing us to cross the Ice.”

“Do not hold me responsible for your father's choice.” Idril's eyes were pale blue and all their fire was pinned on her. Elenwë withstood them. “Turucáno didn't want to leave, not really, even before I told him anything. If he was too weak to turn back, it's not my fault.”

“We could not turn back!”

“Arafinwë did. Turucáno could have too. Indis's grandson abandoned by his turncoat of a wife, left with a young girl to raise on his own? I can't imagine someone the Valar would have pitied more.”

Idril clenched her fists. Her body almost tipped forward, to lash out at Elenwë. “Father wanted to see you again, have you ever considered that?”

“Hard for me to believe it, given how he didn't even want to listen to me when I tried to explain.”

“He was upset!” 

“I was upset too!” Elenwë screamed back and started pacing around Idril. “He stood there, looking at me as if I had suddenly turned into a piece of trash, and I was begging him to listen to me because we were closer than he had ever imagined and there was no reason for us to fight, and I told him that I would talk to Fëanáro. But he shoved me away and told me to never come near him or you again.” Elenwë stopped between Idril and the rising sun. Her gaze softened. “I loved him. I still do.”

She held one hand out.

“Let's do this, you bring us the Silmaril and when your son comes back we will meet and talk.”

“I won't let my son meet you or your brothers.”

“You won't, or maybe you can't?”

“I won't put my faith in you ever again,” Idril replied, trying not to reveal more than she wanted to. 

“I swear we will hand it back once we meet your son, or even his sons –”

“I said no.” Idril pushed past Elenwë. “I have made my choice.”

Elenwë grasped her wrist. Idril stumbled, Elenwë stumbled too and they nearly fell on top of each other. 

“Itarillë, don't be like your father.”

“Maybe if you hadn't been like yours, Lady.”

“I am your –”

“No.” Idril peeled Elenwë's fingers away from her wrist, one by one, calmly. “My mother died on the Ice, a few hundred years ago.”

A woman with Eärendil's hair and Eärendil's face was charging towards her. She felled her friends and her nurses, their blood merging with the the blood-red of her garb. Every kill brought her closer and closer, up the hill and through the useless barricades they had hastily set up, straight towards her. Eärendil's eyes landed on her, with anger and hatred and despair. Eärendil's mouth shaped words she didn't understand, screams that went right into her brain. 

Elwing had steeled herself to face the sons, but no-one had told her about the daughter with Eärendil's face. 

Her hair was half undone and dirty, but it was Eärendil's hair. Bloodied, it looked like a flame, roaring and whirling towards her. 

Elwing felt the burn under her skin, heat creeping from the Silmaril into her chest and into her bones. 

She couldn't take it.

She jumped.

When she came to, on the boat, Eärendil's face hovered over her.

She screamed and pushed him away.

When he managed to calm her down, she still wouldn't let him hug her.

“She looked like you,” she hissed, her hands planted on his chest, fingertips curled into his shirt. “She looked like you.”

“Who?”

“The Fëanorian daughter who tried to take the Silmaril from me.”

“Daughter?” Eärendil tried to bend to kiss her but she tensed her arms even more. “It's only sons.”

“No,” Elwing said firmly. “She was of them, not just one of their soldiers, and she looked like you.”

Eärendil's face creased with worry. “Are you sure it wasn't an illusion? From the singer maybe?”

Elwing thought this over. 

Abruptly, she slipped out of his hold. The fire still burned where the Silmaril rested on her chest. She took the Nauglamir off and tossed it away from her, then hugged herself. 

Eärendil looked at her as if she had gone mad.

“He has never seen you,” she said, fending off his pitying gaze. “She has your face, and she has our sons.” 

“Yes, I am indeed you father's grandmother.” The woman with their father's face set down three bowls on the table, one for her and two for them. “I'm also the one who killed your mother's parents and the one who caused your mother to jump into the sea, and I...well, I paid dearly for it both times,” she said, her eyelids fluttering down over steely eyes. 

Elros and Elrond considered her, while she went about retrieving a pot of hot steaming soup.

Elros thought she only regretted paying dearly for it. 

Elrond was inclined to be more charitable.

“Funny isn't it, my daughter wouldn't let me meet my grandson and your mother left his sons with me.”

“You're not our great-grandmother,” Elros said. “Grandma Idril's mother –”

“– died on the ice, a few hundred years ago, I know.” The woman gave a weird smile, waving the ladle around. “But here we are, after we all made our choices. Except you, that is.”

She filled the bowls with the soup, and sat down opposite them. 

“Mind if I tell you my story while we eat?”

“The story of how you became a murderer?” 

“That too, but I will start from the very beginning, from Findis and how she fell in love with her half-brother Fëanáro.”

Elros scoffed and looked away. His eyes fell on the soup. He didn't want to share the kinslayers' food but starving turned out to be harder than he had expected. And the mountains were cold, he had never been so cold before. The soup looked and smelled delicious. He grabbed his spoon but said, “I don't care.”

Undeterred, the woman fished a portrait out of her breast-pocket, held it out towards them. Elros focused on the soup ignored it. Elrond leant in closer to look at it. 

“These are my parents, who brought me up. They loved me like I meant all the world to them, and any grief I may have caused them is my greatest sin,” the woman said then slowly turned the portrait. “These are Findis and Fëanáro, my birth parents who couldn't keep me.”

She put the portrait down.

Elrond picked it up, ignoring Elros's disapproving gurgle, and studied it intently for a while before showing it to Elros.

Elros was relieved to notice no resemblance whatsoever between them and the people in the pictures.

Elrond handed the portrait back to the woman.

The woman put it away and produced a second portrait, from a different pocket. “This is Idril, as a child, with her father, my husband. Maybe you two will meet him one day.”

“He deserved a better wife,” Elros said.

“Maybe,” the woman concurred. “And maybe I deserved a better husband.”

“A murderer like yourself?”

“Yes, someone who would have fought by my side to the very end.”

“To _what_ end?” Elrond asked.

The woman smiled again, and this time it was their father's very own smile when he held them or played with them. “Sharing a delicious dinner cooked by my brother with my great-grandsons who sound like they're named after me is not so bad.”

“I tell you, she had to be a Vanya, that woman.” 

Ingwion's words stirred outrage among Arafinwë's court, gathered in Finwë's house for the celebrations following the host's return from the East. 

Newly-reborn Findaráto lifted a perfectly shaped eyebrow at his cousin. “What was a Vanya doing stealing the Silmarils from our camp together with Maitimo and Macalaurë?”

“Do not ask me, but I'm sure of what I saw. Her face was hidden, but her hair? It was the same colour as Idril's or yours, aunt Indis.”

Indis only grimaced and shook her head.

“Do you think she was from the camp itself? A spy?” Findaráto was saying.

Findis excused herself and left, her expression unreadable.

Indis leant towards Lalwen, tightening her grip around Lalwen's hand. “Poor Findis. She was always so close to Maitimo and Macalaurë, I think she had still been hoping they might choose differently.”

Nerdanel's face tightened as she watched Findis go.

Findis hastened to her room. She left again almost immediately, after grabbing a basket. She went down into the gardens and picked the most beautiful flowers she could find, bright daisies and plump dahlias and clematis in full bloom and anything else that caught her eye. 

Back in her room, she fished out the key hanging from her necklace and unlocked the cabinet that stood near her bed. Smiling at the two portraits that stood on the main shelf in there, she began twining the smaller flowers into a crown. She sang as her hands worked nimbly almost of their own accord, her mind elsewhere.

“Findis,” Nerdanel called, coming up behind her.

Findis started but didn't drop the finished flower crown. Gently, she lay it down on one of the two busts. 

“You didn't answer when I called, and you left so suddenly we thought you might be upset. Listen to me, it was not in our power to save –” Nerdanel sucked in a gasp as she circled around Findis and her eyes fell on the busts. 

It was Fëanáro next to Elenwë, their shoulders touching. 

“What in Eru's name...?”

Findis resumed twining the flowers together, to make a second crown. “Our children have done it, so it is time for a more private celebration.”

“Our children?”

“You heard Ingwion. The Vanya who stole the Silmarils with Nelyo and Cáno, that was my daughter. Mine and Fëanáro's.”

Nerdanel looked from Findis to the busts and back, her thoughts skittering away. 

“Elenwë,” Findis murmured softly, as if she were calling her. She finished the second crown and decorated Fëanáro's bust with it. “Our children have two of the Silmarils, and our great-grandson guards the third.” 

Nerdanel looked at the busts again. Fëanáro and Elenwë were looking in the same direction, smiling at the same thing. Sharing something they shouldn't have shared. 

“Is _this_ why you asked me to teach you sculpture after the Darkening?” she asked, though she already knew the answer.

Findis smiled.

“How could you?”

Findis shrugged and started arranging the dahlias and the other leftover flowers under the busts. 

“I fell in love with Fëanáro when I was still a child, I think. I cannot say. He waited until I was of age to return my feelings the way I wanted him to, in any case. He wasn't trying to replace you then, nor later on in fact. What we had was a completely different thing, special...unique.” Findis paused. The flowers were gone and she curled her hands around themselves. “I didn't mind him being married to you. I'm not the jealous type. I never wanted him all to myself. I would just...I would have liked to be able to love him a little more freely. I wanted more children. But it was hard enough keeping Elenwë a secret and I couldn't bear to give one more child away.” 

“And you still love him?”

“More than you do, by the looks of things. He was so gentle with me, so gentle, always. We never let anything more than secrecy get in our way. Until Morgoth got in the way.” Findis lowered her head and took a deep breath. “He asked me to go with him at the end. Maybe I should have gone, but I couldn't.”

Waning sunlight streamed through the windows, bathing Findis's face when she raised her head again.

“I couldn't leave. I didn't want to wound Mother more than she already was. Mother needed me. He had a present for me even then, the very last.”

Findis finally turned to look at Nerdanel. She was smiling again, bitterly, but her eyes were strangely serene. Findis who was quiet, gentle and dutiful now looked to Nerdanel as if she were a mountain, steep and impassable, standing solitary against the ravages of time.

“You can tell Mother, if you think that is the right thing to do,” she said after a time. “I'm not entirely sure what I will do myself. Talk to Idril? Go visit Eärendil? Maybe visit Eärendil then kill myself. I'm tired of this empty life, and Mother isn't alone anymore. Though I doubt I could sing the Valar into letting me be with him, not even in death.”

Maedhros hovered on the brink of the chasm. 

Lava bubbled up at the bottom of it. The heat rising from it dried his tears and promised that he would burn like Father.

He was so close to giving in.

Elenwë whacked him on the head so that he fell sideways and not forward.

“What were you doing just standing there?” she yelled, directing an accusing gaze at Maglor as she crouched down next to Maedhros. She didn't hit him too hard, he wasn't bleeding and there would be no scar, but he was thankfully out cold. 

“I didn't feel it was my right to stop him,” Maglor said quietly. 

“Well, it was mine.” Elenwë rolled Maedhros over, and pulled his head into her lap. She brushed his tangled hair away from his face, then wiped the dirt away until she could see the freckles on his cheeks. “I'm not about to let him go.”

Maglor walked the short distance to her and collapsed next to her.

“To think we might never have found out we are siblings if some inconsiderate courtier hadn't said you reminded her of Nelyo,” he said, still shaken. In his mind's eye, Maedhros was already burning. “I might have been alone now.”

“You are not.” Elenwë leant over to kiss his cheek. “It's funny though. I didn't even pay attention to those remarks at first. Me resembling Nelyafinwë Maitimo? That was utter hogwash. But Turucáno kept raving and ranting about it. About how could anyone compare me to one of Fëanáro's sons. So I started asking myself the same. Started observing. Findis was stoic and didn't give anything away even when I hinted to her that I might have been adopted. But Fëanáro? He couldn't keep it all in when I started prodding him with questions about the gems that came with my swaddling clothes. So fine they were.”

“He told us about those, when he told us about you.”

“I was prepared to be outraged, you know. _'What were you thinking, fucking your 26 years younger sister!'_ and all that. And what did he do?” Elenwë sat back on her heels and held her arms out. “He hugged me, and it felt like he was about to melt away in my arms.”

“Those were his worst hugs.”

“Yeah. Made you feel like you had all the love in the world in your arms but were about to lose it at the same time.”

Maglor hesitated, then asked, “is that the real reason why you came with us?”

“Not really.” Elenwë lowered her arms and tried to pry the Silmaril away from Maedhros's hand but his fingers were clamped too tightly around it. “I went to talk to Findis when we were about to leave. She told me that I was free, and that I could be even freer than her if I wanted to.” She turned towards Maglor. “I wanted to.”

“Poor Findis. It must have been tough for her, with no-one to share her grief.”

“Yes, but she's strong. And surely the host of the Valar will have brought her news of our crimes. Call me cynic, but I don't think she's the type to weep angstfully over them.”

Maglor had to chuckle at that. He opened his water-skin and doused his face with the water left in it, finally allowing relief to take over.

“So...here is our problem now,” Elenwë said after a time, gesturing above Maedhros. 

Maedhros was nowhere as heavy as he could have been, but he was tall, much taller than the both of them.

“He needs to be as far as possible from this place when he comes to. But how are we going to carry him?”

**Author's Note:**

> The general idea of this fic already existed back when I posted _Aster_ , wrote it now because I've been craving fierce & unrepentant daughters of Fëanor and after a) genderswap comes b) hijacking canonical female characters without a story (Eldalótë is next, at least in my mind). I also really like all the conflicted relationships / awkward 'family' reunions etc. you get from a full-on Fëanorian Elenwë. For the record, Turgon and Idril only knew about Fëanor being Elenwë's real dad, not about Findis, also Turgon came up with the story that Elenwë died on the Helcaraxë, mainly to protect Idril. (Also consider: great-grandma Elenwë isn't happy at all when she isn't invited to Elrond's wedding...).


End file.
